If I buy a new Mac Book Pro will I lose all the information that I have backed up on the Time Machine when I hook it up to the new Mac Book Pro?

I just want to make sure that I will still have all the information that I backup from my old computer when I buy my new one.

Asked by Courtney C from Mobile

Oct 7, 2009

QA Apple Time Capsule

Product No Longer Available

2 Answers from the Community

Best Answer:

During setup of your new Mac, it'll ask you if you have a Time Machine backup. If you do, it'll transfer all of your settings/applications/preferences/desktop icons, etc. After the migration is complete, your "new" computer will look just like your "old" computer.

I did this last month when my wife's hard drive failed. She had just done a Time Machine backup the night before, so the migration/restoration process was completely painless. Wonderful!

To your specific question: under the covers for Time Machine, each computer that's backed up is stored inside a separate folder. So the backup of one computer doesn't affect others backed up to the same Time Machine drive .

Answered by Bill B from Campbell

Oct 7, 2009

The Answer is NO if you properly migrate from your old Macbook Pro to the new Macbook Pro. There are a number of ways of migrating all your data onto your new computer. The best way is to use the Migration program supplied by Apple. And within Migration there are a few ways to do it. First would be to connect the two computers together ether by firewire or ethernet and make the old computer the source by setting it to Target mode (reboot the old computer while holding the T key until the screen shows the computer to be in Target mode) then run the Migration software and it will move all files, apps, libs and other stuff to the new computer. Another way is to hook up your Time Capsule via ethernet and run Migration in much the same way. Once Migration SW is done, reboot and the new computer should look just like the old one. After all the transfers are done, run the new computer to see if all is well and that all the files are present.